Fracking’s Toll on Pets, Livestock Chills Farmers

Fracking’s Toll on Pets, Livestock Chills Farmers by Mike Di Paola, February 8, 2012, Bloomberg
Something awful is happening over the Marcellus Shale, the vast geological formation in eastern North America where energy companies are looking for natural gas…. Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, a process for extracting gas by injecting high volumes of water and chemicals into deep wells, has sparked complaints about ruined landscapes and fouled groundwater. Increasingly there is evidence, mostly anecdotal, that animals are suffering. A new study by veterinarian Michelle Bamberger and Robert Oswald, a professor of veterinary medicine at Cornell University, chronicles case studies of dozens of farmers and pet owners in six states over the Marcellus Shale. Their findings, published in “New Solutions: A Journal of Environmental and Occupational Health Policy,” are a harrowing account of sudden deaths of cattle, as well as reproductive and neurological problems in horses, cats, dogs and other animals…. Energy representatives dismiss the veterinarians’ study. They say that health indicators have actually improved in areas with shale development.

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